The first volume, Angel’s Truth, came out in August, and the second book, Angel’s Deceit was released in late September, so the last few months have been particularly frenetic because this whole project – half-joking called Project Insanity – began back in January 2017 when I set myself the goal of revising, proofing, formatting, and producing the whole trilogy while doing the bulk of the work myself.

My debut works have far exceeded my expectations, and been far more successful than I could have hoped. I’ve received great reviews, wonderful feedback, and lots of kind words and support from far too many people to name. Copies of the books have been sold far beyond my little corner of the world, with people as far away as Brazil, Australia/New Zealand, Canada, and Japan snaffling copies, while also finding unexpected popularity in Germany (danke schon, Deutschland!).

Thank you, everyone – there’ll be more details to follow, but know that despite my intermittent presence here I’m grateful to you all. Normal service (such as it is!) should resume once the final Project Insanity wrap-up/lessons learned post is up, but for now here’s some exciting news:

My first author interview will be coming later this month (details TBC) with another possibly happening soon after.

If you haven’t read any of the trilogy yet, then for tomorrow only, October 17th, kindle versions of all three books will be available from Amazon for free: Angelwar Trilogy

Today my second novel, Angel’s Deceit, has been unleashed upon the world. It’s the middle volume in the Angelwar trilogy, and follows hot on the heels of Angel’s Truth, my debut released last month. My first release day post last month focused on the origins of the trilogy, and today (and in keeping with the progression of story and characters during a typical trilogy) I thought I’d look at middle bits – the awkward second album, the pause before the resolution, and the way that second books in a trilogy are (at least from my reading experience) often strange beasts.

Perhaps unusually, the Angelwar trilogy didn’t begin as a trilogy. It was only as I approached the end of the first draft of Angel’s Truth that I realised there was a larger story to tell, and that although there was an ending to Angel’s Truth, it was not the end. And between the beginning in Angel’s Truth and the resolution of the larger tale in Angel’s Knight came Angel’s Deceit. Where the first book was a physical and metaphorical journey for Tol Kraven, Angel’s Deceit is something else. There’s more action, more humour, more inns with questionable names, and an awful lot of lace.

The journey isn’t over yet though: Angel’s Knight, the final volume of the trilogy, will be released next month. And, in the meantime, I have the final steps of my own journey to take: two of the three volumes have now been brought to publication over the recent months and I just have the finishing touches to make on the final volume and then the totally realistic and achievable Project Insanity will come to a close.

Today marks the release of my first novel, Angel’s Truth. The novel’s the first volume in the Angelwar trilogy, a Fantasy adventure set on an imagined world in a medieval-type era that I wrote over three years. The subsequent volumes, Angel’s Deceit and Angel’s Knight, will be released over the next two months. They complete a wider story arc begun in the first book, but Angel’s Truth is also a self-contained story that can be read on its own.

As I write this, the book’s appeared on Amazon UK, and should shortly go live on Amazon.com as the USA passes midnight and begins the 26th August. It has been a long time coming: I’ve been writing for 11 years now. It began as a bit of a fun – a hobby – and I wrote several novels over the first five or six years. I fell in love with writing during this time, and slowly got better with each successive book despite never really learning how to write a novel. Eventually, I wrote the novel preceding Angel’s Truth and I showed it to a couple of people. The feedback was positive, and I decided that maybe I ought to learn about the craft of writing a novel. At this point I’d avoided writing books because I loved the freedom of just writing and didn’t want to lose the joy of writing by learning all the nuts and bolts – what if it became too formulaic? What if it stopped being enjoyable? Writing was fun, but also a creative outlet that I needed.

It was, perhaps, a gamble but I took the plunge (best described in a short but dull video montage showing me huddled over a series of books) and began to learn: I read some of the popular books on writing (I already had Steven King’s On Writing but that was it), did some research into techniques here and there, and later (after completing the first drafts of the trilogy) joined a writing community. The result of all of this was the first draft of Angel’s Truth, and now – several years later – I’m proud to say that it’s now available in ebook (and shortly paperback) via Amazon.